From the article: "Data collected by ComScore and presented in this infographic reveals SlideShare has 5 times more traffic from business owners than Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn(which now owns SlideShare)." ~ Deb

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For Google’s part, a spokesperson from the company gave us this statement: “We’re constantly working to protect people from phishing scams through a combination of automated systems, in-product warnings, and user education. We’re aware of this particular issue and taking the appropriate actions.”

Elastica CEO Rehan Jalil told us the company used Google’s automated tool to warn the search giant about the vulnerability about two weeks ago. However, he added, Elastica didn’t follow up with Google before publishing its results. At publication time, the phishing websites were still live.

This is a clever example of a so-called phishing attack that tricks you into giving up valuable personal information, typically your username and password. In this case, the email, titled simply “Document,” states, “Hi. Please see the remaining document on Google drive,” and then provides a long link to click on.

Once scammers have your Google credentials, they can log on to any service that uses your Google login, read your email, access personal files stored on Google Drive, reset the passwords to any other online service that has your Gmail address, and change your password so that you would be unable to log back in.

Fortunately, you can avoid falling prey to this scheme, and any similar, by abiding by the following guidelines.

Don’t trust any old email

...One clever trick on the part of these likely cybercrooks is that the note comes from a Gmail address. This, according to Elastica, may have tricked Google’s spam filters into allowing the message to get through.

Deb Nystrom, REVELN's insight:

Take care with ANY link embedded within an email - using a gmail address can = phishing by the latest scammers.

It's compelling what an animated gifs can do! They are also are more performance and cost-effective than standard video or images. It's a great way to update your programs to the digital space and improve customer interest as well as satisfaction.

Here are some examples:

Repurpose user-generated content (Peace Corp)

Create eye catching and easy to follow tutorials and instructions - Use animated gifs to explain how people can do a certain task, such as how to sign into a website, or how to set privacy settings on a website. (Seeing is believing with the author's excellent example.)

Use U.S. government records to bring history to life - Features images from the last time a gyrocopter flew to Capitol Hill almost 100 years ago

Deb Nystrom, REVELN's insight:

I see creative, expansive use of these digital gifs in all forms of online media, including the government, and also healthcare, education, and just for fun. It's a great way to combine education and social media too. ~ Deb

Sacco’s tweet had become not just an ideological crusade against her perceived bigotry but also a form of idle entertainment. ....As Sacco’s flight traversed the length of Africa, a hashtag began to trend worldwide: #HasJustineLandedYet. ...Come on, Twitter! I’d like pictures #HasJustineLandedYet.”

"...shaming ...gained momentum in 1787, when Benjamin Rush, a physician in Philadelphia and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, wrote a paper calling for its demise the stocks, the pillory, the whipping post, the lot. “Ignominy is universally acknowledged to be a worse punishment than death,” he wrote. “It would seem strange that ignominy should ever have been adopted as a milder punishment than death, did we not know that the human mind seldom arrives at truth upon any subject till it has first reached the extremity of error.”

I found no evidence that punitive shaming fell out of fashion as a result of newfound anonymity. But I did find plenty of people from centuries past bemoaning the outsize cruelty of the practice, warning that well-meaning people, in a crowd, often take punishment too far.

....Social media is so perfectly designed to manipulate our desire for approval, and that is what led to [Sacco's] undoing. Her tormentors were instantly congratulated as they took Sacco down, bit by bit, and so they continued to do so. Their motivation was much the same as Sacco’s own — a bid for the attention of strangers — as she milled about Heathrow, hoping to amuse people she couldn’t see.

Deb Nystrom, REVELN's insight:

I remember these stories. Many of us do. We may not realized how the power of social media can end up being today's version of inhumane tarring and feathering another person and ruining a human being's life and affecting his or her family.

This story gives a wider perspective than is normally seen, including the authors own participation in the lure of judgement online. ~ Deb

Missy, there is such mob behavior that can happen online and football and sports (think soccer parents, the stereotypes) are not immune. I'm all for owning your social media behavior, but that does not apply to trolls and the kind of bullying, anti-social and harmful behavior described here.

That is one reason I have #respect for John Bacon he makes you use your correct name. It will never happen across the board but I think folks should say things they are NOT willing to put their name behind.

Hyperlapse is.... a recently unveiled app from the Instagram [that] lets users capture longer video sequences and then easily make them much more compact, by reproducing the video at a much faster rate, ....creating a stunning, cinematic effect.

....Hyperlapse has now been optimized to be used with front-facing cameras, creating the phenomenon known as #SelfieLapse.

#SelfieLapse is a lot more than just a gimmicky trend ....there are a lot of opportunities to take advantage of using this feature on the Hyperlapse app.

[Show] how a product is built or how it works ...film yourself putting together or even unveiling a new creation on the #SelfieLapse mode and then easily share it to social media as a teaser to create some buzz.

Take your followers to an event. ..

Interactive instant testimonials. ....create interaction on social media....documenting their first impression, their first use or even the instant results ...create some interaction between yourself and your followers as well ....

Deb Nystrom, REVELN's insight:

Looks like this could really be a stand-out app and tool for sharing your message? Have you tried it? I'm going to an event this Saturday, and with their involvement, perhaps I will. :-) ~ Deb

Those who rely on Dropbox to store their personal files may have lost some of their data. The service has experienced some issues regarding a bug in older versions of its available desktop apps. This bug deleted files uploaded by affected users who activated the Selective Sync feature, leading some to find they'd lost a large amount of files.

"[There are]t people (and often just machines) whose lone goal is to sell you stuff. Some of them just collect followers for sale. For these reasons, there is no point to follow them.

Excerpts:

Type 1: “Following equals followers”They are kind of guys, who have the same number of followers as the number of people they follow. [They] gain followers is to start following some unaware people. They are so surprised someone is interested in their tweets, they instantly feel obliged to follow back. Well, this is the way honest people act, isn’t it? The type described here know that. They don’t read your tweets, but they certainly care to spam you properly with their owns.

Type 2: “Thanks for following”You start to follow people who you find interesting. Suddenly, you get a notification someone mentioned you. For a budding Twitter user it’s always a heartbeat. You discover someone thanked you for following them! While it’s nice, you should look carefully at that person.

[Also note that “Thank-yous”] are just one of [many] normal selling techniques. It’s pretty likely, the whole account is just to tweet about nothing, and to target you with a product the guy is selling from time to time.

Type 4: “Tweeting dusk to dawn” - [The Twitter Bots]Before following someone, always have a look at their profile. Good look, good bio, decent number or followers. …you notice they have 4.3k tweets. That means they tweet 20 times a day and have 20 hands and 10 heads. In other words, they are actually a team of people, not a single person. This may not be something absolutely bad as long as the tweets are interesting. Popular websites and companies have such accounts.

But be aware the "user" is not going to read anything you write.

Type 5: “Optimistic spammers”[Review] recent tweets by someone you are going to follow. ...some [are by] desperate entrepreneurs who were told Twitter was good for marketing. Such accounts are full of rubbish like “Did you see our latest offer today?” or the avatar is some soulless logo. Keep away!

Deb Nystrom, REVELN's insight:

Good points by Greg here, especially how to TELL if you are dealing with a TwitterBot, an early version of the Matrix, just ready to lull you into a machine relationship with no benefit to you at all, other than if you just want to buy stuff you may not need.

With the rise of social media, many business owners have sought to control what their employees post on the various social networks. But as the owners of Triple Play Sports Bar and Grille in Watertown, Conn., learned during recent litigation, employers may have less authority than they think.

_______________

Employers may have less authority than they think._______________

In August, a three-member panel of the National Labor Relations Board in Washington concluded that Triple Play violated the National Labor Relations Act when it fired two employees over comments made on Facebook about a Triple Play owner. The N.L.R.B. also determined that Triple Play’s written social media policy violated the Labor Relations Act.

_________________

....the restaurant violated the law by threatening to sue them for their Facebook activity.

_________________

Triple Play violated the law when it fired Ms. Sanzone and Mr. Spinella, the N.L.R.B. found that the restaurant violated the law by threatening to sue them for their Facebook activity. The board also found that the restaurant’s social media policy was unlawful because employees could reasonably interpret it to mean they could not engage in activities that the Labor Relations Act protects. Specifically, the N.L.R.B. concluded that the word “inappropriate” was subject to imprecise interpretation by employees.

The N.L.R.B. issued an order that required Triple Play to refrain from the type of actions that led to this lawsuit, and to take several affirmative steps. These included:

revising its Internet/blogging policy,

offering reinstatement to Ms. Sanzone and Mr. Spinella within 14 days, and

compensating both former employees for any lost earnings and adverse tax consequences they may have suffered.

As always in REVELN ScoopIt news, click on the photo to see the full post.

It is wise to stay on top of how specific you'll need to be in your social media policy and how judicious you need to be before you follow the advice of just your own lawyers, Consulting others in this situation along with the lawyers would have helped. ~ Deb

Scoop.it, the content discovery, curation, distribution and publishing platform has recently added some very significant improvements to its offering, that make it service even more interesting for any kind of online publisher, company or agency looking forward to find, vet and curate the best content available online on a specific topic.

The first and long-awaited new feature is the availability of multiple layout templates that Scoop.it publishers can now utilize and which can be swtiched to instantly.

The second one is full embedding of curated topics onto any web page to make it easiest for any publisher to rapidly integrate and display scoop.it content directly on their sites.

The third and most powerful new addition is the availability of a new white label direct publishing feature for WordPress-based publishers.

Although I have not had the opportunity to test this new feature, which is available only through a new Marketers subscription plan, it surely looks as the perfect fit for all those publishers who wanted to use Scoop.it more as a backend for producing curated content for their site than as a final publishing destination.

With these new additions Scoop.it consolidates itself as feature-rich, reliable and affordable content curation system that can satisfy many different types of needs: from education, to content marketing, news publishing and community building.

I think this fits into Harold Jarche’s simpler seek-sense-share framework.

Why does this matter? If curation is all that Tufte and Bhatt say it is, then why aren’t scaffolds like these being used more often for training and in learning systems? I am using the curation tool Scoop.it to do curation with my freshman comp students. They use Scoop.it as their introductory platform for beginning to acquire the skills Tufte enumerates above that are part of the academic and business spaces they will eventually live in. I am hoping they will demonstrate why it curation matters as they seek-sense-share their way to long and short form ‘texts’ that they will be writing all semester. That will include essays, tweets, G+ community posts, blog posts, research papers, emails, plusses, favs, instagrams, zeegas, slideshares, pictures, and a massive mobile presence from their own digital spaces. Wish me luck.

"A curator, therefore, whether she is a journalist-by-proxy such as Popova or a student completing an assignment in a classroom, not only collects and interprets, but also creates a new experience with it."

Earlier this month, Facebook dropped a bombshell by not only acknowledging that Facebook pages’ organic reach was declining but also by telling us we should not expect them to recover.

Facebook’s VP of Product for Facebook Ads, Brian Boland, went on to explain that this is the new world we live in now, that the same thing happened with search engines before and that we’d better get used to it. It’s true that many platforms go through a similar cycle: first, they present a great free opportunity, then more and more people grab it - decreasing the return for everyone until finally, the platform focuses on those ready to pay for play.

It happened with Google Search; it happened with Apps (yes, Apple doesn’t sell ads but others do - such as coincidentally... Facebook). And now that all social media are publicly-traded company with ambitious revenue targets to reach, it will happen to social media as well.

So what does the decline of organic reach on Facebook and social platforms exactly mean on a practical basis? Continue reading →

Related tools & posts by Deb:

Stay in touch with Best of the Best ScoopIt news, taken from Deb's NINE multi-gold award winning curation streams sent once a month via email, available for free here, via REVELN Tools.

The statistics and changes in Social Media, featuring Facebook and their filters are worth a good look for business marketing reasons.

This is a ScoopIt piece, emphasizing the ScoopIt platform's advantages for content curation. The research featured and the freshness of content shared, often shared by others a month or two later, is why I moved from the now defunct Posterous to ScoopIt. ~ Deb

While Facebook remains the most popular social media site, other platforms — like LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram and Twitter — saw higher rates of growth over the past year. In 2014, 52% of online adults used two or more social media sites, up from 42% in 2013.

Facebook continues to be the most popular social media site, but its membership saw little change from 2013. The one notable exception is older adults: For the first time in Pew Research findings, more than half (56%) of internet users ages 65 and older use Facebook. Overall, 71% of internet users are on Facebook, a proportion that represents no change from August 2013.

Every other social media platform measured saw significant growth between 2013 and 2014.

Instagram not only increased its overall user figure by nine percentage points, but also saw significant growth in almost every demographic group.

LinkedIn continued to grow among groups with which it was already popular, such as professionals and college graduates, while...

Twitter and Pinterest saw increases in usership across a variety of demographic groups.

The engagement of Facebook users continues to grow, while daily use on other platforms shows little change.

The findings reported here were collected in omnibus surveys underwritten by the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The survey questions were designed in consultation with Dr. Nicole Ellison and Dr. Cliff Lampe from the University of Michigan’s School of Information.

As for all Scoops, click on the photo or title to see the full article.

Rumors of Facebook's demise have been a bit exaggerated. Social media is firmly in the mainstream of marketing, as is the growth of seniors using Facebook. Also note that based on American adults who use the internet, using several types of social media is on the rise. ~ Deb

When you're first getting started out on a social network, it seems absurd not to respond to anyone who tweets at you, good or bad. You've been told time and time again that responding to everything is a best practice for growing your following.

Deb Nystrom, REVELN's insight:

For beginners or those who just want to double check their habits, this is a handy #infographic resource from HubSpot. ~ Deb

http://twitpic.com/135xa - There's a plane in the Hudson. I'm on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy.3:36 PM - 15 Jan 2009

When [other] major events happened, such as when Osama bin Laden was killed, and when Mitt Romney mentioned binders during the presidential debates, people instantly came to Twitter – and, in particular, Twitter search – to discover what was happening.

...[there's a] real-time human computation engine we built that allows us to find search queries as soon as they’re trending, ...[these are sent to] real humans to be judged...

...Overview....how the system works.

(1) ...we monitor for which search queries are currently popular.

Behind the scenes: we run a Storm topology that tracks statistics on search queries.

For example: the query “Big Bird” may be averaging zero searches a day, but at 6pm on October 3, we suddenly see a spike in searches from the US.

(2) Next, as soon as we discover a new popular search query, we send it to our human evaluation systems, where judges are asked a variety of questions about the query.

Behind the scenes: when [we detect] that a query has reached sufficient popularity, it ...dispatches the query to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service, and then polls Mechanical Turk for a response.

For example: as soon as we notice “Big Bird” spiking, we may ask judges on Mechanical Turk to categorize the query, or provide other information (e.g., whether there are likely to be interesting pictures of the query, or whether the query is about a person or an event) that helps us serve relevant tweets and ads.

Photo by Dixon Tam, Flickr CC

Deb Nystrom, REVELN's insight:

I'm writing a digital chapter for a professional book for Wiley that includes crowdsourcing. I was delighted to hear of this example of the human interaction in twitter and wanted to share it with you. ~ D

Anyone that still uses an Hotmail, AOL or Yahoo email address is publicly admitting that technology has passed them by. It is not that they are just uncool, they are a security risk. If you are running a business via AOL or Yahoo email, you need to know that your customers and contacts are at risk from receiving malware, spyware or other damaging payload via your email account.

_______________

It is not that they are just uncool, they are a security risk.

_______________

Most people with Hotmail, AOL & Yahoo accounts have no idea what two-factor authentication is or how to enable it. Because of that, these email accounts are very susceptible to someone cracking the password and sending email to all of your address book and people that you have ever sent a message to or received a message from. Despite the embarrassment of having your account hacked, it is a liability to your continued business success.

Gmail still has some cachet, but anyone using email for a business purpose can register a domain for $10 and enable email within about 10 minutes. That along with two-factor will help keep your good name solid and secure.

Click on the photo or title to see the full post.

Deb Nystrom, REVELN's insight:

Two factor authentication means that Google, Facebook, Amazon, twitter, or others want an extra bit of identification, like a zip code, or to send a code to your mobile phone so that you can verify that you are who you say you are.

From CNet: "2FA is nothing new. When you use your credit card and you must enter in your ZIP code to confirm a charge, that's an example of 2FA in action. You must provide a physical factor, the card, and a knowledge factor, the ZIP code."

Personally all of my email accounts, old and new, are forwarded through Gmail. The spam is cleaned out well, and my business email account, has the personalized name REVELN.com, but is really a Google business app. It's been so helpful to keeping spam out of my way and prioritizing messages as "important."

I may use something else if there is a need for high security, but for now, my clients and communication are fairly safe. What do you use to keep your email and communication safe and usable?

"LinkedIn is an incredibly valuable business connection and resource site. When used properly."

Excerpt:

...you don’t want to become the person others avoid or warn others about. If you want to maximize your LinkedIn experience, consider doing the following:

Reach out to people you know for connections. If you want to connect with someone you don’t know, tell them why – and make sure it’s a business reason:

Seek to learn about companies: Their goals, needs and challenges (instead of seeking to sell them something).

Connect people to solutions: Even when it’s not something you sell.

Deb Nystrom, REVELN's insight:

It's important to have a business connection of some sort, and to clarify this in your request to connect. Attempting to use a generic and impersonal request to connect could be suspect, especially if it turns out to be based on the attractiveness of a the recipients business photo. It is not the way to go to build your business.

Well presented information, but should not be used as gospel. things change so fast in social media that there's a half-life to just about any rules and guidelines. My best advice, have a plan that makes sense to you and pay attention to the analytics.

Placeit is a unique tool that allows you to choose from a range of pre-made templates and backgrounds, for you to then ‘place’ your own images in. …[OR]…type in any URL and Placeit will automatically insert a screenshot of the page into your design.

To get the best size images and unlock more features, you will have to pay. However you can get a decently sized version of your creation to use for free.

2. SHARE AS IMAGE

This Chrome extension is an easy way to turn any text that you find when browsing, into a striking image that you can then share. The benefits of it being a bookmarklet, means that you don’t need to leave your browser or open another tab/window, in order to create highly shareable images.

4. VISME

[Big Feature…it does]… a range of tasks all in one place. From presentations, infographics, animations and much more, it allows you to create some truly stunning visual content, right from your browser. No need to download any clunky software!

Who can deny the power of a great infographic? …They can also tell us a great deal about a subject in a very small space. …With over 30 chart types to choose from, there’s bound to be something to get you started.

Writing without the power of visuals is flat and boring. These tools bring your ideas to life. Stacey's made some very useful annotations about what is useful about each of the 15 tools. Great list! ~ Deb

Few of us realize, or understand, the access we give to programs we use every day.

Via the Washington Post: In Facebook’s defense, there are plenty of legitimate reasons for requesting these permissions. Messenger needs access to your camera, for instance, so that you can send pictures, and few people would want to confirm microphone access every time they use the app to place a call.

....Our collective ignorance over this whole app permissions thing probably explains the hullabaloo over Messenger. Yes, it’s potentially “insidious,” to quote Fiorella, but so are WhatsApp, Viber, MessageMe and virtually every other popular messaging app, all of which request comparably creepy permissions.

Deb Nystrom, REVELN's insight:

I logged out of my mobile Facebook account due to video data usage. I uninstalled Facebook Messenger too as it was just a bit too intrusive to my taste, Now it's good to review just what you need in order for the app to work in the first place, like most apps. It's all about the data they collect that funds the way they do business. ~ D

Kelly created the acronym, SPLAT, to define the five most ingredients in helping others learn.

S = Safety–creating an environment that allows for learningP = Problem solving–helping others find solutionsL = Lectures–avoiding them and focusing on teaching insteadA = All–all audiences are visual learnersT = Talking–teaching others is one of the best ways to learn

Excerpted:

Remember this from the 5 points in the article:

4. All Audiences Are Visual

Bryan Kelly addresses the research on variety of ways students learn. …in studying the neuroscience of audiences, Kelly found the vast majority of people are still influenced significantly by what they see.

Simply talking through content with listeners is not enough.

5. Talking: a reminder that learning almost always happens best when learners talk about what they learn.

…In the school setting… A true assessment is to see if a learner has internalized a lesson enough to effectively tell someone else about it.

…we can keep learning meaningful when we SPLAT:

Provide safe learning environments.

Make content a part of finding solutions to problems.

Engage others by avoiding lectures.

Remember all of us learn though what they see in visuals.

And help others apply and “talk through” what they have learned.

As always in our ScoopIt news, click on the photo or title to see the full Scooped post.

I consider myself to be an "experienced" educator -- that means I've spent many years in the classroom and I'm "old." But I've never stopped trying to learn more and to be reflective about what I am doing so that I can improve how I help students learn.

The five ingredients listed in this blog post are fairly "spot on" in my opinion and my experience. I would have enjoyed a post like this when I first started my teaching career. I'm not sure if I would have fully understood all of this initially -- but it would have made it much easier to learn this in the trenches.

Share this with all of your teaching colleagues -- "experienced" and "new" to the profession...

So many webinars do NOT follow this handy SPLAT acronym. Q & A, by "raising your hand" is not the same as "talking is learning." We have a long ways to go to enable full conversation in webinars. The current stay is still MUCH more lecture based. ~ Deb

There are 22 million people following the top 100 social media savvy universities on Facebook. Which ones are in the top 3? One of them is a certain well-known major research university in the Midwest. Find out via this handy infographic.

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.